In today's digital world, the use of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to display and manage computer information has become ubiquitous. For example, the WINDOWS™ (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash.) operating systems used in many personal computers employs a GUI desktop with various icons or indicia representing objects on the computer system. The icons may represent applications, data files, hardware components, shortcuts to Internet addresses, and any variety of other data.
For many users, the GUI desktop is a convenient location for temporary (or even permanent) storage of icons representing applications and data that the users wish to have available as they go about their daily business. Managing the arrangement of these icons, however, can become difficult if a large number of icons are displayed, as individual icons can quickly become lost in a sea of other icons.
The problem becomes even worse when the user makes changes to the GUI desktop. For example, today's display monitors often allow changes in orientation to switch from landscape to portrait mode, or vice versa. Making such size changes alters the orientation of the usable space on the GUI desktop, and can disrupt the user's icon organization, making it more difficult for the user to function. Accordingly, there is a need for an intelligent management of desktop items that can account for such changes.